One major difference between our ancient and modern times is the ability to read and write. In the ancient era, people lived simple lives and depended on the few resources around their immediate environment to solve their daily problems. Their histories were preserved only in oral traditions that soon got twisted so badly that in most cases, they became unrecognizable with the passage of time.
In some of these places, they developed their own forms of reading and writing but the effort was too feeble and could not impact the society in any meaningful way. Again, it was usually seen as something for the elite; the privileged few whom the society had seen worthy of acquiring and keeping the special treasure.
This pervasive inability to read and write limited the society and ensured that their development was stunted. However, it was a thing of happiness that the colonizers came to us with reading and writing. When they taught us how to read and write, they also opened us up to new vistas of life. Through the skill of reading, we acquired the ability to be in one place and see the world. We discovered that we could actually crawl into someone else’s mind and understand what goes on there and what motivates him to do what he does. In books we saw solutions to problems we thought defied solution. They showed us all kinds of possibilities, challenges and phenomena we never knew existed. Reading showed us how big the world is as against the earlier belief that the world revolved around the village. It also showed us how the world can become a village. The impact of reading on the life of an individual is simply amazing.
Unfortunately, this society seems to have got tired of exploring this amazing ocean of great treasures in such a short time. We received the gift of reading and writing some decades ago and many of us have used it to become doctors, lawyers, engineers, nurses, technicians, teachers and so on. Sadly, we seem to believe that the ultimate goal of reading and writing is to get into one profession or the other. Maybe we received this precious gift wrongly after all. That is the only way to explain a situation where people read for only the wrong reasons. They read to impress other people, not because they hunger for relevant knowledge.
The primary school child is taught to read so that he can pass and go to the next class. He does not really get to see reading as an enjoyable experience. The parents find it unnecessary to buy good books for this impressionable child and also make out time to read with him. Only books recommended by the school are bought, most times reluctantly. At the secondary school level the child has already acquired this apathy for reading but he must read to pass. He reads to impress his teachers and parents. At the university, the disease worsens. He has to be coerced, forced and intimidated by greedy lecturers before he buys any book and after buying it, he may never open it for one day. Since passing exams is his only objective, he finds other ways to making good grades, bypassing the unpleasant path of reading. This is how low we have gone and how bad our educational system has become.
I believe there can still be a remedy if parents will be willing to play their parts in the inculcation of the right values in their children. Reading to your child at an early age helps him develop the appetite for reading.
The education system should be restructured to focus more on the development of skills and abilities than on the passing of examination. Teachers should be trained in a different way to achieve a different result. If we want to produce children that enjoy reading, we must expose them to teachers who are not products of a deformed educational system.
Many of the adult population dread reading anything and, as they say, children learn more from what they see you do than from what they hear you say. The ones who read anything at all read only the Bible or the Koran according to their religious persuasion. What this means is that even these adults read to impress the religious leader or to impress God, not necessarily that they enjoy reading for the sake of finding knowledge.
In any society that wishes to progress, the leaders must be men of letters; people who value knowledge and are willing to make sacrifices to get it. One does not need to look too far to understand why the Nigerian society is not experiencing growth in the true sense of the word. We are in dire need of leaders who are readers. Such leaders will be able to tap from experiences of other world leaders, past or present, to solve the problems that confront their people.
The hope of this country lies in the reformation of the minds of the masses and there is no better tool for such reformation that the reading and writing skill. It is therefore incumbent on people who wish to lead us to take cognizance of these facts and factor them into their programmes for a greater nation.
Nnenna Ihebom
